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HENRY WARREN TORREY 



Henry Warren Torrey, Professor Emeritus of Ancient and 
Modern Histor}^ in the University at Cambridge, was born in 
Boxbury, Massachusetts, November 11, 1814. He was the son of 
John Torrey and Marcia Otis, daughter of Henry and Mary War- 
ren of Plymouth. He was educated in the Adams Grammar School 
in Boston, where he received a Franklin Medal at ten years old, 
losing his father in the same year (1824). He was a pupil of the 
Boston Latin School under Master B. A. Gould, completing the 
five years' course in four years, from 1825 to 1829, and gradu- 
ating from Harvard College in 1833, where he stood second in 
rank, the late Professor Bowen being first. 

He was usher at the Latin School under Master F. P. Leverett, 
whom he assisted greatly in the compilation of his Latin Lexicon. 
The English-Latin part of this book was entirely prepared by 
him, and the part of it from A to C was an original work, where 
Mr. Torrey had in sober earnest attempted that almost impossible 
task, the preparation of a book really worth the name, to assist 
in translating good English into good Latin. At this stage of 
the work he was forced to desist, and for the remainder to confine 
himself to a recasting of '' Ainsworth," a task singularly uncon- 
genial to Mr. Torrey, whose fine mind was one of the first to recog- 
nize the worthlessness of Ainsworth's Dictionary, — a work to be 
recast only by being cast into the fire. 

His service on the two Lexicons had practically ruined his eyes; 
but this loss did not deter him from studying law at New Bedford 
in the office of his accomplished and ever genial uncle, the Hon. 
Charles Henry Warren. He was admitted to the bar, but never 
practised, on account of his ej^es. He kept school in Providence 
for a year and a half, and made a voyage to the Azores with Hon. 
William W. Swain. This was one of the many vain efforts of 
that warm-hearted and excellent man to restore health to his son 
Kobert, whose lovely character, tried in the furnace of scarcely 
intermitted suffering, only seemed to approach nearer to the an- 
gels with every hour that brought him to his end at the age of 
twenty-one. 

Mr. Torrey was again instructor in the Latin School in 1842, 
and Tutor in History and Instructor in Elocution at Harvard Col- 
lege from 1844 to 1848. For the next eight jeurs he kept a girls' 

school at No. 5 Hamilton Place in Boston, .u'ith his sister, which 

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HENRY WARREN TORREY. 449 

attained the highest reputation. In 1856 the McLean Professor- 
ship of Ancient and Modern History, for many years vacant 
through the meanest of political intrigues, was conferred on him. 
He immediately took a year of European travel, and returned to 
discharge the duties of his professorship in 1857. He was engaged 
in its active labors till 1866, and was then appointed Professor 
Emeritus. While holding this title he was chosen on the Board 
of Overseers, and died on the anniversary of the death of Wash- 
ington, December 14, 1893. He was elected to the American 
Academy, November 12, 1856. 

Mr. Torrey's active life was that of a teacher. It is of little 
moment to speculate whether he might not have distinguished 
himself in some other line. He was emphatically an instructor, 
and not a few of his pupils are jet living who feel that he was the 
best instructor they ever had, — the one to whom they owe most. 

He was a teacher according to the old fashion; that is, being 
a scholar and a student himself, he expected his pupils to be 
scholars and students on the lines he laid down for them. He 
impressed upon all of them the idea that he who will not work 
cannot learn; and that both working and learning must be done 
in the line of duty, — that of subjecting one's own mind and energy 
to the control of those in rightful authority. He never swerved 
from this rule, yet he administered it with such unvarying sym- 
pathy and kindness that no pupil who was worth teaching ever 
felt any sense of coercion or harsh pressure, or was other than 
stimulated and braced by his kindly insistence. As soon as his 
pupils had done their work his began. He supplied to them an 
amount of knowledge, not only on the specific subjects they were 
studying, but on a score of others, which they never could have 
acquired without repeating his own indefatigable labor. From 
first to last this knowledge was unerringly accurate. A mistake 
of fact was to Professor Torrey simply an untruth; and to state a 
name or a date incorrectly was to falsify. Whatever was not right 
was wrong. 

But he did not end with facts. He combined his vast stock of 
information into an organic whole by the spirit of a philosophy 
which soared far above the mere earth of accumulation which 
makes up so much of human learning. The effect of this con- 
structive power on his pupils was startling, if such a word can be 
applied to so precise and gentle a character. A student might 
come before him, fancying he knew a good deal of history for a 

VOL XXIX. (n. S. XXI.) 29 






450 HENRY WARREN TORREY. 

young man; he might have studied it, read it, or even, as a boy 
does, written it; then would Mr. Torrey reveal to him, not only 
how little all this information was, but how infinitel}'- greater and 
better m kind was the Philosophy of History, — the relation of 
nation to nation, of period to period, and of all to the mighty 
scheme of Providence which he saw working through all time. 
Yet in all this setting forth the great subject in its true perspec- 
tive, and making the amount of his pupils' knowledge appear 
very small, there was absolutely nothing unkind, no undervaluing 
a single real acquirement. On the contrary, he made the value of 
every pupil's attainments far greater than it would have been had 
they gone on without him in their own boj-ish way and spirit. 

This power of lighting up the specific subjects that he treated 
was nowhere better shown than in his instruction on the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. Not a few of his pujDils have been called 
upon to serve in positions of authority under that august instrument; 
and none of them would deny that they received from his instruc- 
tions an understanding of their practical duties which no other 
teacher, public or private, could give. 

But more than one teacher is learned and stimulating, and yet 
is entirely without two things which were the very life and soul of 
Mr. Torrey's instruction : first, his affectionate heart, which went 
out to every pupil who would accept it as to a personal friend; 
and, secondly, his supreme allegiance to duty, wherewith he tried, 
in that absolute simplicity which was his nature, to inspire his 
pupils, as might an elder brother who knew that if they did not 
follow the way of right they never could accomplish anj^thing 
worth doing. That nobody could xeMy be a good scholar, or a 
good historian, without being a good man, was the core of all his 
teaching; and it was worth while to be under him, if only to learn 
this one thing. 

Such was the man in the class-room, clinging to the old- 
fashioned discipline and methods, which he might well think 
the best, because his own glowing personality had warmed them 
into a vital force that needed no further kindling from modern 
devices. There was a certain veil of formality about his pres- 
ence which might at first deter one from penetrating into a more 
intimate knowledge. Yet something about his ready smile and 
his eager manner, never cold though always courteous, encouraged 
his pupils to bring to him personal requests and difficulties, wliich 
were invariably received half-waj^, and proved the ready key to 




018 485 002 3 ^ 

HENRY WARREN TORREY. 451 

outside acquaintance. The threshold once passed, it seemed amaz- 
ing that one ever could have considered him formal. No heartier 
or more genial friendship ever glowed in a human breast. He had 
been brought up under one of the most brilliant wits of his day, 
the late Judge Warren, already named; and an inherited playful- 
ness, softened by an ever-present sense of propriety and modesty, 
made his conversation inexpressibly delightful. It was so to all; 
but it was most peculiarly so to such as having been his pupils 
became after an interval his colleagues in instruction. To them 
his house and his heart were open in a combination of the elder 
and the equal hard to describe. There was nothing that mind 
or heart desired to fill the void caused by exhausting daily work, 
to heal the blows received from daily stupidity, waywardness, and 
ingratitude, which a j^ounger teacher could not find in his com- 
pany", — sympathizing with one's annoj^ances, confirming one's pur- 
poses, elevating one from depressing doubts. It had been much 
to sit at his feet and obey him ; it was infinitely more to sit by his 
side and love him ; and the world is darker since his presence has 
been withdrawn. 

Having given years of such public and private work to the 
College, he saw with pain that methods and aims with which he 
found it hard to sympathize were in the ascendant; but there was no 
want of loyal tj^ in the efforts which he made to accept them; and 
though he distrusted seriously the indefinite extension of an elect- 
ive system, that system received no better assistance than he gave 
it in his advanced courses. The best of the old was equal to the 
best of the new. It was touching to see how, on not a few occa- 
sions, his faultless pen, from which flowed the purest of old classi- 
cal English, was employed to give adequate form to matter which 
certainly did not originate with his suggestions. 

His nature was sensitive; but it was not the sensitiveness of a 
morbid or selfish constitution, — it was the sensitiveness of his 
Pilgrim ancestors, — the sensitiveness of a conscience which loved 
and courted the gaze of Heaven, and shrank from every transgres- 
sion of absolute right as an insult to the God of truth. His un- 
tiring industry, his capacious and penetrating intellect, his ardent 
energy, were all directed and chastened by his ever living sense of 
Christian duty; and his work, which may pass unchallenged the 
severest tests of practical humanity, was devised, carried on, and 
completed in strictest view of the higher scrutiny which belongs to 
an eternal standard and an unseen Judge. 

1894. AViLLiAM Everett. 



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